The Sin Eaters

by Aaron Summers

  “I remember.”

  The priest handed the symbol to him.

  “Today, they are going to take you to the altar for sacrifice. I cannot stop them. There has been no rain in… in so long. We are all dying. There will be true war soon. There must be a sacrifice. But this is not the way. Blood does not make rain.”

  “Blood does not make rain.”

  “You have to stop them, Takka. Show them what you are. Do not let them kill you. You need to leave this place and grow, like your dream. You have to become the tree. You are already the seed. Do you understand?”

  Takka closed his eyes. His chest stopped moving. Blue Moon Dancer still was not sure if his odd friend even breathed. His feet began to ache from standing so long.

  “Takka, do you understand?”

  Takka opened his eyes. An evil purple stain surrounded but did not penetrate the resilient white pupils of his strange yes.

  “I remember.”

  ◆◆◆

  A desperate nation gathered around the temple’s broad base. The island should not hold so many people. It might tear apart, literally, under their immense shifting weight. Blue Moon Dancer saw representatives from Texcoco, Tlacopan, Metztitlan, Yopitzinco, naked savages from some forgotten jungle place he had no desire to visit, handmaids and princesses from the northern lands, jaguar warriors with furs in various states of new splendor and weathered resilience, and people. More people than he had ever seen. The whole world had come to watch the sacrifice that would bring the rain. Tenochtitlan’s might would be affirmed for all time once the rains returned. Lord Motecuhzoma’s name would never be forgotten.

  It was all wrong. They crowded around the temple’s base while priests prepared the altar at the summit. He was the reason they had clean water for so long. Now they were killing him to make more. This was all wrong. There were no gods worth loving who loved this sin.

  There were the drums. Naked children raced ahead. They threw wilted flower petals along the path. A blue-and-white striped face led the procession. Blue Moon Dancer knew the high priest. His name meant nothing. All their names should be forgotten. Six children followed as soldiers whipped their backs. The crowd roared as the children’s tears fell. Tlaloc demanded these tears, apparently, or he would not send rain. He was a greedy god. Torchbearers followed the children and for an awful moment, he thought they might sacrifice the children. But no, the children could always make more tears. The god statue had but one heart to offer.

  The priest’s hands found his eiehuia’s cord. It was all he had left. His life was already forfeit to illness. His wife and daughter were lost, one to the sleeping sickness and the other to the king’s handmaiden court. His daughter must be here today. He knew he would not know her face.

  There was Takka. He was not even shackled. The best cordage meant nothing against his indeterminate strength. He walked to death with a serene smile. The old priest saw a cord dangling from a closed stony fist. At least he still held the vegvisir.

  “I do not understand,” his guest croaked from a nearby doorway’s shade.

  The priest almost forgot her. Buried beneath several shawls despite the smothering heat, she looked more skeleton than human. At least she was awake. He hoped the shock of seeing Takka would not kill her.

  “You will, cihtli. Come! We must hurry!”

  He slipped the word gift from his robes and approached the guards who blocked the commoners from the temple steps. A jaguar commander stepped forward. His beard was graying and more scars than unblemished skin covered his muscular frame. The gods cast these killers in the same mold, it seemed. He had not thought of Smiling Fire Hawk in a lifetime.

  “Halt, witch doctor. The quetzalcoatls forbid you.”

  “I invoke my eiehuia,” Blue Moon Dancer shouted as he turned to the interested crowd, “given to me by the tlatoani Nezhuacoyotl of the Texcoco for my service in bringing Takka and the language of the Unknowable God to the Mexica!”

  The crowd surged in. The jaguar warrior barked a command and more soldiers appeared. They forced the crowd back. A man screamed as a spear found his foot. The commanding officer considered the faded word gift.

  “This is a high ceremony. There has been nothing like it in the history of our people. Even the…”

  Blue Moon Dancer dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Even the wish gift has limits, commander? Is that your next statement? This is a dangerous covenant to break in these belligerent times.”

  “It is…” the warrior looked up. The procession has reached the second tier of steps.

  “As you ask, Sahagun.” He leaned in so that Blue Moon Dancer was staring into the jaguar’s fangs. “You will ask for your wish and then I will punish you.”

  “Well enough. Lord Nezhuacoyotl gave me this eiehuia. I will ask our tlatoani to honor it. Make way. Captain, we need someone to carry this grandmother with me. Come now!”

  He started up the steps as the crowd began to shout. Some called him witch doctor. Others shouted his name. Most screamed for rain. A few simply moaned. The soldiers intervened. He saw the procession pause as the noise reached them. A soldier moved past him with the grandmother in his arms. He began to climb.

  Blue Moon Dancer’s arthritic feet found the way as he reached the summit. Wind whipped up from the drying lake. There was no shelter from the blinding sun. He wheezed and collapsed. Two warriors picked him up. There was the blue-and-white high priest. His shaking hands held an obsidian knife and a wooden mallet. A dozen jaguar warriors flanked the summit.

  Takka lay on his back on the altar. His limbs hung slack as he smiled into the searing sun. Motecuhzoma stepped forward, dressed in the resplendent regalia of his office. A comically large headdress displayed offerings from all the kingdoms the Triple Alliance ruled. His famous indulgence in sport gifted him a body more rigorous than that of most kings. Blue paint stained his broad lips.

  “You go too far, Blue Moon Dancer, even for one as blasphemous as you. Your heart will be next,” the king of all the world said.

  The priest held up the eiehuia. He tried to speak, coughed, and fell over.

  “I invoke… invoke… stop this. Where is… where is… woman with me? Where is she?”

  The grandmother had moved to Takka. She ran her hands over his chiseled skin, letting her soft skin tear in the crags and edges.

  “Takka.” The party turned at her voice.

  “You know him!” Blue Moon Dancer cried.

  “All people know him,” the priest spat.

  Blue Moon Dancer ignored him.

  “Takka, look at her. Do you know her? Woman, tell him your name.”

  She was crying. The thick tears dripped onto her hands, his flesh, and the thirsty stone.

  “Takka, it is me. Do you remember? You wanted water and you were so lost. I hi… I hit you with my staff. You were a stranger. I gave you the water skin. Qaletaga took you to his tent. Do you remember?”

  “Quanah,” he said. “I remember.”

  Her weeping turned to open sobs.

  “I am an old woman now. Where did you go? How did you come here?”

  “I brought him here,” Blue Moon Dancer said.

  “To save us all,” Motecuhzoma said. “Blue Moon Dancer, is this true? This is Quanah, who named him?”

  She was crying and hugging Takka.

  “Yes. I found her, tlatoani. After so long.”

  “It… I wish it were sooner, friend. Look around you. Our world dies. We need this rain. Takka,” he turned to the waiting creature, “we need this rain.”

  Quanah screamed, a parched rattling sound too weak for the gathered crowds to even hear. She tried to push the king away but the guards intervened.

  “We must. Tlaloc demands a sacrifice. We have slain so many. Look at the stones! New blood ruins them yet still no rain. We kept their messenger long enough. He must go home. We begin.”

  The priest moved around the altar. He brought the knife high above his head while
he spoke.

  “Tlaloc is thirsty for the return of his messenger! We thank you, Takka of the Living Stone. Do you offer your life freely?”

  Takka looked from Quanah, to Blue Moon Dancer, to the necklace in his hand, to the priest’s obsidian knife, and back to the blazing cloudless sky.

  “I offer.”

  The knife plunged. It slipped between plates of stone to the hilt and beyond. No gush of black organ blood rushed up. The priest automatically worked the knife down to Takka’s waist and then up to his throat. He yanked the knife free and swung his arm above his head to show the thronged city the wet blood that meant rain. There was no blood. Takka smiled at him.

  “I remember. Eg er Jernbjorn. Hallo, Quanah.” He waved at the old woman. “Akuma Nanko. Watshiwafissahdesu.”

  The priest gaped and backed away. His abandoned knife shattered on the stone. The jaguar warriors moved closer, holding their shields and macuahuitl between them and the man who should be dead.

  Motecuhzoma rushed forward. He forced his hands into the new cut and pulled Takka’s ribs until they cracked open. Where there should be a gory stew of organs and blood, they found a bone-gray pulsing cavity. The king stumbled backwards. He grabbed a macuahuitl from the commander.

  “Takka, you must allow this. We need…” he flung his hand to the sky, “we need the rain.”

  “Blood does not make rain.”

  “You will die today. Take him.”

  The jaguar soldiers crept forward. Even they were afraid to attack. What unliving thing was he?

  “No more. I remember.”

  Takka climbed off the altar. The waiting population screamed as they saw the slain man rise, his open chest presented to the world.

  A lieutenant swung his weapon but the living statue swatted him away. Bone and macuahuitl shattered.

  “Now!” the king roared. “Take him!”

  “No! I call on my eiehuia!”

  Blue Moon Dancer felt the words rumble in his throat but did not remember thinking them.

  “I wish to use my eiehuia. King Motecuhzoma, please. My eiehuia.”

  He held out the faded tablet. The king looked to Takka.

  “We need the rain. He cannot go.”

  “You cannot deny the wish gift. It would... the damage to the Triple Alliance would be… it would be too much. Worse than this drought. War. All of us.”

  “We need the rain.”

  The king’s voice was flat. He handed the eiehuia back.

  “Then take me! I offer myself. I am the bridge. Takka speaks to me. Let him go back to the wild. The gods will find their own messenger and be happy you did not slay him. Take me.”

  The king shifted his stance faster than the old priest thought possible. He must be truly desperate for any other way than this. They shared that, at least.

  “You offer this freely?”

  “I…” Blue Moon Dancer looked to Takka. “Take Quanah. Find my daughter. Leave this place. Our gracious tlatoani will help you return to your gods. Yes, King Motecuhzoma. I offer this freely.”

  Takka turned to the king as he closed the gruesome gates of his open chest.

  “No. I remember. We go. Blue Moon Dancer. We go. Find our way.”

  “Takka, no. I am already dying. It will be next month or next year. We do not all live as you do, friend. Go. Quanah, go with him. Go. Takka, go. You have to remember. Find your way. Vegvisir. Go.”

  The creature looked at the symbol in his hand and then to the woman he had not seen in half a century.

  “Go,” Blue Moon Dancer said a final time. “Remember.”

  The sun set on Tenochtitlan that night as Takka walked with Quanah and Blue Moon Dancer’s daughter down the king road to the southern jungles. There were cities on the southern edges of the wild places, or so the Mexica believed. He repeated the litany of words he could remember. They meant things again, not translated into the borrowed language Blue Moon Dancer taught him but on their own. They were his words. They were the names of people he forgot he knew and places he forgot existed.

  A light rain misted the thirsty city they left behind. It washed the bloody altar clean.

  CHAPTER 18 - YUUSH

  “Darumbull Jonah Balerion lived his life and is now gone.”

  Lundoo was as close to a priest as anyone in the growing Leyevi tribe cared to indulge. He knew his religious speech annoyed most. The long oval mask of his priesthood gave him courage. He could see the silent Leyevi but they could not see him.

  He also knew the concepts, even if the truth of them was rejected, fascinated the tribe’s chieftain. Today was the day to wield his precious leverage. Jonah had been a good friend to him. They were fellow foreigners in this strange new world. The once-famous grappler also understood the need to protect these peoples. Lundoo looked down from his platform for Fen in the crowd as he continued the eulogy.

  “Five fine years I knew Old Jonah. He was first among the Leyevi to join with Fen. He coached the horseling, drank airag by the jug, told stories none of us believe are wholly true, and bedded as many women as he could. He lived a good life. Only our memories remain. No spirit lingers. No ghost haunts this place. Sheol, Elysium, Heaven, and Valhalla do not wait for him. He is gone.”

  Lundoo let those arcane words linger. Did anyone here even know what he meant? Sweat ran down his neck. He murmured a silent prayer of thanks to God for the heavy mask and then a rapid rosary to ask forgiveness for the minor sacrileges. God would understand.

  The stark white ceremonial mask normally sat in the corner of his tent. It was an elongated oval thrice the height and twice the width of his paunchy face. He peered through its black rectangular eyes. Where was Fen?

  “Remember this.”

  He spread his arms wide so that his cloak draped like an owl’s wings and then brought his upraised palms together in front of his chest.

  “He does not rest because he is gone. The Dread Balerion who rode the lightning is gone.”

  The would-be priest took a torch from the child holding it and turned to the waiting pyre. He sniffed, savoring the mingled odors of tar and softly decomposing man. The Steppe would take him if the fire didn’t. These were the familiar odors of ritual. The ignorant and the apostates could deny all they wanted that humans were born for things such as these. He knew the truth.

  He dropped the torch on Jonah’s scarred abdomen. The long but finally fading summer had stolen every ounce of precious moisture from dried juniper limbs already too eager to burn. The unwrapped man burst into flame. Lundoo stood beside the corpse until its coiling smoke reached the high darkening sky. The crowd faded. Fen remained.

  Lundoo slipped the heavy mask behind his head as he descended the platform. The tribe would reuse all the wood they could before sundown. Some had argued it was a waste of wood to burn Jonah. The old man should help feed the earth that gave him life for a while, they said. Lundoo’s vision lingered on the roaring fire.

  “Fen Enkidu,” he pressed his knuckles to his dipped forehead, “I do not know what to say now. Others might weep, or gnash their teeth, or drink and feast. This emptiness simply is. I am sorry for your loss.”

  “As it should be. Walk with me, Lundoo.”

  Fen turned down a path through several larger tents. Lundoo frowned as he followed. It was not strange for Fen to call on him to discuss some matter for long hours. The chieftain once kept the healer awake through an entire day and night, despite the elder man’s blazing fever, to question how any person could craft dead trees into ships for floating across whole oceans. It had taken quite a long time to explain what an ocean was, and then that those oceans circled the earth, and then how all the land fit in this new watery world. He still wasn’t sure Fen believed him.

  Lundoo enjoyed their conversation, most days. Fen was unlike any Steppe folk, even most Novgorodi, Lundoo knew. He would have thrived in… other worlds. The healer would not allow himself even to think the secret names of secret places. He started to suspect there simply was n
o one else like his chieftain, anywhere.

  But the man’s mood today was dour. He could hide behind this emptiness that paraded as meaning all he wanted. All knew Fen loved Jonah. His final infection lasted many months. Old Darumbull refused to give away a single drop of life, unearned, to the Yuush. It had been cruel. The shaman lingered several paces behind as they headed for the camp’s edge. The chieftain broke their silence.

  “There are more tents now than ever. The Leyevi grow.”

  “That they do, Fen Enkidu. Do we know the number?”

  “No,” Fen called over his shoulder. “Why would we know this?”

  “It is a thing... a thing some people might want to know. That is all. I guess three, maybe four times as many as when I came to you.”

  He watched Fen’s bare shoulders flex as he shrugged. Apparently the man’s spiny protrusions preferred to avoid his musculature and spine. What did grow there looked more like a salmon’s scales than the ragged stuff of his mountainous elbow. A string of pearlescent scars on Fen’s left shoulder, like blinded eyes floating in the dark, hypnotized Lundoo. Every detail of the man, he noted to himself for the hundredth time, told a story of pain survived. He best not forget that as they spoke today. People faded beneath their pain. Fen brightened.

  “You spoke good words. You do not believe them.”

  “The way you speak worries me. You compliment me with one hand and strike me with the other.”

  They reached the camp’s edge. Lundoo looked back. He should know how many now lived with the Leyevi. Travelers came and went. Children were born, most died, but more than ever in recent memory lived through both the trials of infancy and the morbid passage rite of cancer in their adolescence. These were the data he should be tracking.

  Fen crouched to recover a pebble. He seemed to study the swaying reeds. A darker, bushier reed waved out of rhythm with the shifting wind. He flung the pebble. The darker reed snarled as the pebble skipped off its bony brow. They watched the wolf vanish up a hill.